So I'll start on the regular front: The Carnegie Hall Show. The summer's been an interesting season - while most shows take breaks because so many of the performers have opportunities to tour shows, do theatre festivals or follow the Fringe around, we too have lost each (and sometimes all) of our cast to other engagements during the summer but soon will have the whole gang back together, at least for a while. Not that the "original lineup" is the only recipe for a sure-fire show of course, we've had a slew of awesome guest performances.
The reunion of the cast is just in time though, as our show has been picked for both the Toronto Improv Festival and the Montreal Improv Festival this fall! Unfortunately, after some attempts at shuffling dates around we are unable to make the Montreal party - but there's always next year. Our Toronto date is September 23rd - Wednesday! That should be easy to make.
This week's show will be a bit of an experiment too, only in the sense of re-purposing the show as a fundraiser for a charity I'll be doing a bit of work with next month, The Sandals Foundation. Through them, while on a trip to the Turks and Caicos next month we'll be building community gardens and playgrounds in some of the less fortunate villages on the islands, and also doing a bit of environmental protection work protecting the local reefs. We're going to use this week's event toward a fundraising goal I've been challenged with through my office and we'll see what the community can provide us.
In other news, I'm in at Second City! By "in" I mean that they finally called me in about the great new Musical Directors program they've started up. They have a very cool series of workshops sharing the tricks and methods that the Second City shows use to involve live improvised music into their shows. I'm most excited about this because since I've just been making this up as I go along (which in improv, I guess is allowed!), I'm very interested to really talk techniques and go-tos with other more experienced Musical Directors. I'm already going to start more regular session accompanying classes in the training centre soon and I'll also be taking the classes while I'm there. It's very exciting!
Outside of improv, I finally got a copy of And Here's The Kicker which is a very cool book of interviews with the relatively nameless writers behind the most popular TV shows and comedians of all time. So far I've learned a lot about the development of a lot of the templates for today's talk shows, sitcoms and film comedies, but also the writers themselves are of course very funny and insightful. There's also a lot of little inter-chapter sidebars about how books get sold, jokes turn into jobs and a few "Whatever you do, don't..." lessons learned the hard way many times over by writers over the decades. I'm not even halfway through but it's already the most satisfying read I've found about writing since I finished Crafty TV Writing.
Also I've gotten back into radio in a big way lately by finding out about a lot of public radio shows in the states, notably The Moth and This American Life. I've wanted to do some kind of radio-format podcast for some time now and so many forms are so appealing, but I think I'd have to settle somewhere around radio play or documentary. Obviously those are both BROAD categories, but I just don't know the words to form the specific type that I'm thinking of yet. I've reassembled my portable recording kit so I'll get to start experimenting on locations again soon. If only I knew anything about documentary...
Until next time!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Beer Pop/Music
As I mentioned previous a couple weeks ago while I was in Vancouver visiting I hung with the TrueNuff boys and did some video-ing. While I was there James also showed me the newest addition to the merch store: a Cute little Japanese "safety bottle opener" they labeled as the "Beer Popper." We wanted to shoot some kind of commercial clip for the new item (even though by the time it went live they'd already sold half their stock!) We did land on an idea of something in the vein of Vince "Offer" Shlomi of ShamWow and Slap Chop fame:
What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:
Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"
So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:
Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.
What we ended up shooting was an improvised informercial pitch spot in that style. With a little clever editing on the dudes' part it came out this way:
Now one of the best things to ever happen to the Slap Chop brand was a killer video and music remix by the now-much-better-well-known DJ Steve Porter that was known as "Rap Chop"
So as an exercise in what I figured was inevitability, I thought I'd beat out the a) request for me to try doing a remix and b) the other fans that might just do one first anyway, and do my own. I wasn't going to do the auto-tune/vocoder stuff of the other one, I just wanted to edit, beatmatch and slice. While trying to make some drum beats for it though, I realized I was trying to replicate the beat from The Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" - so I figured screw it and I just decided to do a Mash-Up, which seems to be all the rage right now anyway (or at least it was, it may be on it's way out yet.) Here it is:
Doing the edit was a lot of fun and I forgot how much fun it was - I hope to find other little things like this to have fun with coming up.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Flashback to the west coast, future in the east
While I was visiting Vancouver a couple of weeks ago I got a chance to do a little drop-in work with the TrueNuff TV guys. Running a sketch comedy group as a business is a really tough go - be it with friends or business partners - because even when you're not concerned with making money, where that money goes or what you should do it is still an easy thing to disagree on. It's also really easy to get distracted by that and forget to make with the funny.
Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!
Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.
Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.
When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!
Sitting in on the shoot and making a cameo or three with the dudes was killer fun though. I miss being producing like that but also with messing around with my crew and having fun while doing it. There are some new videos over at TrueNuff TV going up right now that I jumped on board for, thanks for letting me back in, guys!
Back here in Toronto we're a couple shows in with The Carnegie Hall Show since our brief hiatus last month. Last night we filled the place to the rafters - sold out! It was amazing. Thanks to all who have attended and if you're curious, come on down! We're at the top of our game.
Well, as the fall is coming up (don't deny it, it's on the way!) I'm getting another opportunity with Second City - I'll be in as a Musical Director Apprentice (I've always wanted to be an apprentice!) in the next month, taking some workshops, working some workshops, and eventually sitting in on some shows and hopefully doing some on my own soon enough. Second City is a great hub for the comedy community, even if so many people operate outside of it's doors, it's a great gateway to smaller shows in our larger community and and a great resource for learning and networking. I'm really looking forward to being more formally involved with them.
When I started this blog I wanted to make it my development and writing blog, but that's coming slower than I expected and I've become so much more involved in related projects that I think I've been less able to keep updating, but I think other aspects of my work in the Toronto comedy community are just as interesting, so I'm going to keep up more info than I have been. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Making it up as I go along
So another long stretch between posts, but a busy and exciting one!
The Carnegie Hall Show is still going great. We've been playing every week, nailing down what is essentially a new improv format, introducing our show to the community and the city at large and response has been very encouraging. I do think that lousy Toronto weather has kept audiences on the conservative side (size wise, not politically) so I hope that if this God awful weather ever breaks, then we'll get more happy people on the streets looking for fun things to do. Kensington Market is very quiet this time of year it seems.
Also, another ongoing yet irregular show I've gotten to play is the improvised soap opera Dysfunctional Utopia: A Serialized Romance. Directed by Ron Pederson, the improvised soap features over-the-top characters in a developing overdramatic storyline complete with adultery, conspiracy, murder and mad scientists - and we're doing it again this Sunday! Ghost Jail @ Clinton's on Bloor St.
On the writing front I'm still doing more reading about writing than actual writing, but I'm reading a lot. The latest book I've picked up is "The Way of Story" by Catherine Ann Jones - A book that while it contains some good reminders of the process of builsing outlines and developing characters that I've read in better books, there's a lot of new-agey type stuff about visualization and seemingly letting the story write itself, which I can't stomach to believe is actually very effective. As well, Jones packs the book full of self-congratulatory anecdotes about the few productions her career has consisted of, which do little to sell me on her advice since all the stories and ideas she's sold are never ones I would want to put my name on. (This isn't to say there isn't a market for writing a movie where Dolly Parton plays a country singer (what casting!) who dies and can't get into Heaven so has to go back to earth and do a good deed to get eternal bliss - but good God who would want to?)
More educational than any book I've read or heard of so far though has been the community of TV writer/bloggers that I've be uncovering. Alex Epstein has a great book and accompanying blog [Complications Ensue] about writing, the business of writing and (most importantly to me) the business of writing in Canada. Through him I also found Denis McGrath's killer blog of similar themes [Dead Things on Sticks] which also led me to blogs, groups and a killer weekly meeting of TV pros from Toronto. Last Friday I got to have a beer with Denis, Ed McNamara, Rob Pincombe and Rob Sheridan just because I showed up. This week was even bigger, plus George Strombo showed up. I've never been a proponent of networking (probably only because I haven't ever been good at it) but I feel like I meeting a lot of the right people to know a thing or tow about where to go and what to do once I actually have some product to show.
Anyway, Carnegie Hall is still every Wednesday and Ghost Jail is every Sunday. Come say hello!
The Carnegie Hall Show is still going great. We've been playing every week, nailing down what is essentially a new improv format, introducing our show to the community and the city at large and response has been very encouraging. I do think that lousy Toronto weather has kept audiences on the conservative side (size wise, not politically) so I hope that if this God awful weather ever breaks, then we'll get more happy people on the streets looking for fun things to do. Kensington Market is very quiet this time of year it seems.
Also, another ongoing yet irregular show I've gotten to play is the improvised soap opera Dysfunctional Utopia: A Serialized Romance. Directed by Ron Pederson, the improvised soap features over-the-top characters in a developing overdramatic storyline complete with adultery, conspiracy, murder and mad scientists - and we're doing it again this Sunday! Ghost Jail @ Clinton's on Bloor St.
On the writing front I'm still doing more reading about writing than actual writing, but I'm reading a lot. The latest book I've picked up is "The Way of Story" by Catherine Ann Jones - A book that while it contains some good reminders of the process of builsing outlines and developing characters that I've read in better books, there's a lot of new-agey type stuff about visualization and seemingly letting the story write itself, which I can't stomach to believe is actually very effective. As well, Jones packs the book full of self-congratulatory anecdotes about the few productions her career has consisted of, which do little to sell me on her advice since all the stories and ideas she's sold are never ones I would want to put my name on. (This isn't to say there isn't a market for writing a movie where Dolly Parton plays a country singer (what casting!) who dies and can't get into Heaven so has to go back to earth and do a good deed to get eternal bliss - but good God who would want to?)
More educational than any book I've read or heard of so far though has been the community of TV writer/bloggers that I've be uncovering. Alex Epstein has a great book and accompanying blog [Complications Ensue] about writing, the business of writing and (most importantly to me) the business of writing in Canada. Through him I also found Denis McGrath's killer blog of similar themes [Dead Things on Sticks] which also led me to blogs, groups and a killer weekly meeting of TV pros from Toronto. Last Friday I got to have a beer with Denis, Ed McNamara, Rob Pincombe and Rob Sheridan just because I showed up. This week was even bigger, plus George Strombo showed up. I've never been a proponent of networking (probably only because I haven't ever been good at it) but I feel like I meeting a lot of the right people to know a thing or tow about where to go and what to do once I actually have some product to show.
Anyway, Carnegie Hall is still every Wednesday and Ghost Jail is every Sunday. Come say hello!
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